Mark Kermode's DVD round-up + Keira Knightley | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/film/series/mark-kermode-dvd-round-up+keiraknightley
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Mark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/03/anna-karenina-keyhole-dvd-kermode
Anna Karenina; Taken 2; Keyhole; Hotel Transylvania; Barbara<p>After a sojourn away from the somewhat staid literary adaptations (<em>Pride and Prejudice</em>, <em>Atonement</em>) with which he made his name, Joe Wright returns to another classic text, clearly invigorated by the audience-pleasing lessons learned on the somewhat sentimental <em>The Soloist</em> and the full-on action-romp <em>Hanna</em>. For all its flaws, his adaptation of <strong>Anna Karenina</strong> (2012, Universal, 12) is a laudably full-throttle affair, packed with unembarrassed flourishes of Russellian visual invention, theatrical daring and even dance.</p><p>Using a proscenium arch device to circumvent the problems and/or expenses of location shooting, Wright's rendering of a well-worn but still thorny narrative boasts splendidly fluid cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, a swoony score from Dario Marianelli, and an especially fine turn from Jude Law as Anna's unloved husband. That the film itself should be perhaps more cerebrally impressive than emotionally engaging is partly a result of Anna's frosty ambiguity – an unsympathetic quality that the increasingly admirable Keira Knightley pitches just right. The result is understandably chilly fare, occasionally bloodless but never lacking in ambition, and unafraid of its own dark heart.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/03/anna-karenina-keyhole-dvd-kermode">Continue reading...</a>Keira KnightleyJoe WrightLiam NeesonAdam SandlerIsabella RosselliniPeriod and historicalDramaThrillerAnimationWorld cinemaDVD and video reviewsFilmCultureSun, 03 Feb 2013 00:05:13 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/feb/03/anna-karenina-keyhole-dvd-kermodePR'Increasingly admirable': Keira Knightley in the title role in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina.PR'Increasingly admirable': Keira Knightley in the title role in Joe Wright's Anna Karenina.Mark Kermode2013-02-03T00:05:13ZMark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/04/killer-joe-dvd-review-kermode
Killer Joe; Men in Black 3; Seeking a Friend for the End of the World; The Five-Year Engagement<p>Six years ago, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/william-friedkin" title="">William Friedkin</a>'s magnificently raw adaptation of Tracy Letts's paranoid psycho-thriller <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/115302/bug" title=""><em>Bug</em></a> managed to slip under the radar of most UK filmgoers, thanks in part to the bemusement of its distributor, which simply couldn't figure out how to sell the damned thing. Not so his next Letts collaboration, <strong>Killer Joe</strong> (2011, Entertainment One, 18), a deep-fried, jet black slice of twisted Texan gothic that has attracted the kind of attention and notoriety that Friedkin has not enjoyed since the days of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080569/" title=""><em>Cruising</em></a>.</p><p>Boasting barnstorming ensemble performances from Matthew McConaughey, Gina Gershon, Thomas Haden Church and rising star Juno Temple, this tale of trailer park lowlifes conspiring variously to bump off and/or pimp family members became an outre cause celebre thanks in part to a grotesquely prolonged scene of quasi-sexual chicken-bone abuse upon which an attention-grabbing PR campaign was built. Ironically, it's the least well-judged part of a movie that veers throughout between smartly psychotic satirical dialogue and hackneyed virgin/whore gender role cliches.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/04/killer-joe-dvd-review-kermode">Continue reading...</a>William FriedkinTommy Lee JonesKeira KnightleyEmily BluntDVD and video reviewsFilmCultureMen in Black IIISun, 04 Nov 2012 00:01:04 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/nov/04/killer-joe-dvd-review-kermodeprMatthew McConaughey and Gina Gershon in Killer Joe.prMatthew McConaughey and Gina Gershon in Killer Joe.Mark Kermode2012-11-04T00:01:04ZMark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/24/mark-kermode-cronenberg-dvd-round-up
A Dangerous Method; The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; Young Adult; Hunky Dory<p>&quot;Experiences like this, however painful, are necessary...&quot; With his hermetically sealed adaptation of Don DeLillo's <em>Cosmopolis</em> merrily – and deliberately – baffling R-Patz fans in cinemas, David Cronenberg's similarly stagey, talky psycho-drama <strong>A Dangerous Method</strong> (2011, LionsGate, 15) presents itself for further analysis from the (dis)comfort of the home-viewing couch. Based on Christopher Hampton's play, significantly entitled <em>The Talking Cure</em>, this dramatises the birth of psychoanalysis as a tense three-way relationship between Freud, Jung and patient-turned-lover Sabina Spielrein, whose contortive hysterics fire the attentions of both doctors.</p><p>Lacking the visceral punch of <em>Crash</em>, the sensuality of <em>Eastern Promises</em>, or the passion of <em>A History of Violence</em>, <em>A Dangerous Method</em> offers a strangely cerebral view of sexuality – cold, clinical, and notably (perversely?) lacking in eroticism. With heavyweights Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender matching each other in the battle for theoretical supremacy, it would be easy for Keira Knightley to become the weak link in the dramatic chain. Yet the fact that her jaw-jutting (and clearly heavily researched) performance strikes such a jarring actorly note reflects more upon Cronenberg's direction than on Knightley, who seems to be giving the film-maker exactly what he wants. Indeed, like <em>Cosmopolis</em>, it appears that – like it or loathe it – <em>A&nbsp;Dangerous Method</em> is the auteurist film Cronenberg wanted it to be, give or take a few financial restraints that result in some hokey but forgivable CGI scene-setting. As such, it sits within the canon of later-period works such as <em>Spider</em> in which his attention seems to have shifted from the more physical pleasures of the body to the loftier reaches of the intellect – perhaps bypassing the heart en route.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/24/mark-kermode-cronenberg-dvd-round-up">Continue reading...</a>Michael FassbenderDavid CronenbergViggo MortensenKeira KnightleyDramaComedyDVD and video reviewsFilmCultureA Dangerous MethodSat, 23 Jun 2012 23:05:40 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jun/24/mark-kermode-cronenberg-dvd-round-upPRKeira Knightley and Michael Fassbender in A Dangerous Method.PRKeira Knightley and Michael Fassbender in A Dangerous Method.Mark Kermode2012-06-23T23:05:40ZMark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/16/mark-kermode-dvd-roundup-herzog
Cave of Forgotten Dreams; The Ward; Last Night; Viva Riva!; Green Lantern<p>News that maverick Bavarian director Werner Herzog has been cast as the villain in the forthcoming Tom Cruise thriller <em>One Shot</em> should come as no surprise to anyone who recognised the source of Hugo Weaving's devilishly accented performance in <em>Captain America</em>. There is something about Herzog's deadpan voice that suggests awesome, infinite, unworldly powers just waiting to be unleashed. It's a quality that he uses brilliantly in the documentaries that have become his signature works, enabling him to speak merrily of the &quot;ecstatic truth&quot; of art and the attendant &quot;chaos, disharmony and murder&quot; of the cosmos with a blend of quasi-religious import and pathos. When the day of reckoning comes, I half expect to hear Herzog's voice calmly separating the damned from the redeemed, the strangely comedic sound of a divinity that shapes our ends…</p><p>In <strong>Cave of Forgotten Dreams </strong>(2010, Revolver, U), Herzog is once again in search of the birth of human soul, taking his cameras into the Chauvet caves of southern France, home to mankind's oldest known pictorial art. Here, he finds images of animals, of people and of evocative hybrids of the two, scratched and painted on to undulating walls, which have remained hidden for centuries. Due to the immense fragility of the ecosystem in which this artwork has been magically preserved, it is claimed that more people have walked on the moon than have breathed the air inside these caves since their discovery in 1994. This, and the fact that the contours of the caves are an organic part of the artwork, convinced Herzog to shoot in 3D; after all, if time and access are severely limited, shouldn't the director use every tool at his disposal to maximise the experience of the film?</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/16/mark-kermode-dvd-roundup-herzog">Continue reading...</a>Werner HerzogKeira KnightleyDVD and video reviewsFilmCultureGreen LanternSat, 15 Oct 2011 23:05:39 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/oct/16/mark-kermode-dvd-roundup-herzogPRWerner Herzog, second right, and crew in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.PRWerner Herzog, second right, and crew in Cave of Forgotten Dreams.Mark Kermode2011-10-15T23:05:39ZMark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/26/never-let-me-go-yogi-bear-kermode-dvd
Never Let Me Go; Yogi Bear; Season of the Witch; The Rite<p>It's easy to understand why some people were wrong-footed by <strong>Never Let Me Go</strong> (2010, Fox, 12), an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's singular sci-fi novel about life in a parallel near-present. For one thing, the publicists' almost obtuse refusal to acknowledge the story's genre roots and market it instead as merely an enigmatic love story probably turned away more viewers than it attracted.</p><p>Posters (and, indeed, DVD cover artwork) depicting Keira Knightley looking wan while Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield share a meaningful embrace implied something more along the tragic-romantic lines of <em>Atonement</em> than a dark fantasy of human cloning and Holocaust-inflected dystopian horror. In fact, many of those to whom director Mark Romanek (who made the creepy <em>One Hour Photo</em>) and&nbsp;writer Alex Garland's adventurously deadpan chiller might have been most appealing may not even have known of its existence: fans of such peculiarly British screen weirdies as <em>The Quatermass Xperiment</em>, <em>Death Line</em> and <em>Village of the Damned</em> – movies which seamlessly melded universal existential unease with endless cups of tea and cosy parochial comfort.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/26/never-let-me-go-yogi-bear-kermode-dvd">Continue reading...</a>Keira KnightleyAndrew GarfieldNicolas CageAnthony HopkinsDVD and video reviewsFilmCultureSat, 25 Jun 2011 23:04:03 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/26/never-let-me-go-yogi-bear-kermode-dvdFoxSearch/Everett / Rex FeaturKeira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield excel in Never Let Me Go, Mark Romanek's ‘adventurously deadpan chiller’. Photograph: Rex FeaturesFoxSearch/Everett / Rex FeaturL-R: Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield in Never Let Me Go: 'Holocaust-inflected dystopian horror'. Photograph: FoxSearch/Everett / Rex FeaturMark Kermode2011-06-25T23:04:03ZMark Kermode's DVD round-uphttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/20/skyline-kids-all-right-london-boulevard
Skyline; The Kids Are All Right; London Boulevard; Machete<p>Despite a barrage of negative reviews, Jonathan Liebesman's alien invasion actioner <em>Battle: Los Angeles</em> topped box-office charts on both sides of the Atlantic last weekend, proving once again that the popcorn is mightier than the pen. Meanwhile, the Strause brothers' <strong>Skyline</strong> (2010, Momentum, 15) makes an all but simultaneous crash landing on DVD, reminding us of last year's legal rumblings from Sony who complained that this cheaper, faster pretender had somehow stolen their thunder. Crucially, the Strause brothers, who run an effects company that worked on <em>Battle: Los Angeles</em>, didn't inform the studio that they were making their own thematically comparable invasion flick for a tenth of the cost. Didn't this amount to a fifth column invasion of their ideas?</p><p>One can understand the studio's anxiety; there's no denying that <em>Skyline</em> looks worryingly good for a $10m movie, and it's somewhat scuzzy, hand-held aesthetic adds an off-kilter indie sheen (the movie was indeed financed entirely outside of the studio system). What the film lacks, however, is anything in the way of originality; whether or not the Strause brothers lifted anything from <em>Battle: Los Angeles</em>, they have certainly pilfered willy-nilly from everything else, from the hanging motherships of <em>Independence Day</em> and <em>District 9</em>, to the snake-armed metallic gribblies of <em>The Matrix</em> and <em>War of the Worlds</em>, and the human ascension riffs of <em>Quatermass</em>, all filtered through a post-<em>Cloverfield</em> verit&eacute; haze. More significantly, despite the comparative paucity of its budget, <em>Skyline</em> has nothing to match the invention of Gareth Edwards's <em>Monsters</em>, which followed hot on its heels, and which genuinely redefined the boundaries of low-budget &quot;spectacular arthouse&quot; cinema at a cost of less than $1m. Clearly, you can't put a price on invention.</p> <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/20/skyline-kids-all-right-london-boulevard">Continue reading...</a>DVD and video reviewsFilmCultureJulianne MooreKeira KnightleyColin FarrellSun, 20 Mar 2011 00:03:00 GMThttp://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/20/skyline-kids-all-right-london-boulevardPRBrittany Daniel as Candice in Skyline.PRBrittany Daniel as Candice in Skyline.Mark Kermode2011-03-20T00:03:00Z